When Nations Fall
by ChibiKillerPanda
Summary: The Cold War shouldn't have ended like this. The politicians should have just given eachother great big bear hugs, we shoulnt have been bombed by Russia. Based on Fall of a Hero by whitetyger123 in the POV of a regular human in a postapocalyptic wasteland


I can still feel the tremor that threw art lining my walls to the ground and sent my cat scrambling away. When I look at the sky, I can still see the streaks of orange that distantly looked like giant, airborne fireflies next to a canvas of star dotted navy. Each stroke paints an innocent flash of colour. Each breath draws closer to a moment where I can see nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing – and at the same time live in an existence of my senses screaming. Now the dots of stars in the sky have hidden themselves from the eyes of Toni and the people around me. They try to keep their heads down. Somewhere in the crowd, someone is screaming; the sound numbs us. This isn't real. This war was only a few immature politicians who like to create tension without going over to Russia and giving the other equally immature politicians big bear hugs. That's all it was meant to be. No bombing, no flashes of yellow in the distance with debris and a shock wave that nearly decimated the south side of our town. The mushroom that rose into the sky like overgrown fungi wasn't meant to be, either. But the answer felt blatant. Russia bombed us, put up Her foot and then slammed it down till there's nothing left but radiation that has surely been blown straight into our town and leeches at our lives with every breath we take. The dust and dirt that has risen with Her anger seems to have painted the sky an angry red with hues of maroon and radiation orange. In our town, we used to have one of the clearest skies of our state; I used to stand up on the Hill and watch the Andromeda Nebula, I used to try and picture what black lines of dark matter would look like. The Andromeda Galaxy might not be gone, but she's hidden from our eyes and from the world by a blanket of suffocating maroon and orange that stretches out to the horizon till I wonder if it reaches Canada, too. If it went down and hugged our streets... would we still breathe? Or would our life be snuffed out, just as the candle of Bismarck suffocated and sputtered last night?  
>Toni asks me of God is still with us. She hasn't spoken for hours; the morning light seems more pure than the shock of last night, than the struggle of getting out of the burning carcass of our house before it collapses in on us. It's almost as though it washed away the dirty radiation laced dust that settled over us at the end of the night. Her voice is quiet and raspy; she's had a bad cold for a few weeks now, and staying up all night really isn't helping it one bit. It's almost as though some French frog took a nosedive down her throat while she slept. Every time she coughs the people around us shuffle away, as though afraid of getting infected. I shoot them glares when they give me questioning looks as though silently asking – <em>"why are you letting her cling to your side? You're just going to get sick and die." <em>But the answer is simple. She's my sister. Her question sets my lips pressing together. I want to open them and say that of course he's with us, God is always with America. The patriotism of my mother runs strongly in my heart. But my voice catches just as those words were about to leave my lips; would God have let the house collapse on mom? There's no life lesson or some bullshit like that to be learned from an experience like that. The only thing I learned was that if there's a house collapsing on me, I should just tuck my pride somewhere deep inside of myself and then book it, cause honey, you're not going to live long if you stick around to play the hero. Those words scream, and my instincts urge me to follow – but honestly? I'll play the hero if I want to. I'm not going to abandon Toni. If she's sick, she's already lost; but that's a fact that I'll ignore and proceed to do so. She's my sister. She's immortal. And who cares if I get sick, too? Toni presses closer to me, her impatience showing in her body language. Her head is tucked underneath my elbow and at the center of my waist. She wants and answer, _quickly._  
>"He's not gone." I know it's a lie. So I move my dried and cracked lips more quickly, trying to cover up the lie that passed through my lips. "But we're in his hearts..." I want to cringe at how cheesy that sounds. A numb sensation that has set over the townspeople has dulled that urge to scramble over my words and understand why I have a certainty that <em>something<em> isn't with us, to understand why I'm not in hysterics. In the movies, the people always understand immediately what is going on so they can step up and fix it. If I feel numb and apathetic, does that make me heartless? Do I not care about my country that much?  
>The woman who was screaming earlier is now just sobbing. Her sobs reach me with numb clarity, too.<br>"You're lying." For an eight year old, she's incredibly level headed. But I can feel a wetness clinging to my side, next to her cheek. She's crying. I press my lips together in a firm line. They are so dry. It feels as though the explosion's shockwave sucked out all moisture from my skin. Dropping down, I pull her into my lap and I hug her but I know that I can't console her. There's nothing that I can do to help the empty feeling that must be in the center of her being, an emptiness that must mirror my own. We're sisters. No explosion can tear that apart. But she's so distant... "He's not gone yet. If he goes... He'll come back. And I doubt He'll forget about us." I smile but it doesn't reach my eyes. Somehow, I vaguely notice that I'm not talking about God. And I know that he hasn't left yet. He's still here. Around us, I hear the groan of metal before a house collapses in on itself – it's one of the houses closer to the fire – and Toni's grasp tightens around my waist. The groan sounds like something out of a movie, too – it raises hair on the back of my neck, and I know with a certainty that it wasn't just the house that collapsed. With its descent, something in my chest had taken a groaning plummet that could only result in lifelessness and apathy. Others must feel it too, because more sobs and tears join the chorus that the woman had started. Somewhere in it, I can hear a man sobbing as well. And sometime, I join too silently, only letting the wetness that falls from my eyes and onto my sister's blond head to show that I can reflect the pain of this village and the body of my mother at my back, buried underneath a carcass of fallen metal and painted wood. Her body quivers. I hold her more tightly and pray to somewhere, anyone that her cold will go away and we'll be able to find someplace where we can sit and be safe. Maybe Canada. We _are _in North Dakota; Minot is pretty close to the border of some boring state up there. (Or is it a province? Calling it an American state sounds way cooler.)  
>If I told her this thought, would she care? There's no time. Some black haired man in the townspeople is trying to order us into groups, as though he expects that we can live in a place like this. Some people can be so stupid at times. We can never live this close to a place that has been bombed; the radiation will kill us. Even so, I don't like the glint in his eyes. It's madness. Getting Toni to her feet we walk over to the remains of the house that we lived in and we pass down the corner, turning away from the people and their crescendo of sobbing – there's nothing there but unstable emotions and people who will try to take over the town as their own. In their eyes, the ones who assess the situation better than others – better than me – have a glint in their eyes of hope, of patriotic passion that the United States of America can't go down that easily. It's weak. It's flimsy. And something at my chest twinges somewhere in my numb state to let me know that even though I know we will all fall to our knees to Russia and beg, that knowledge can't keep me from fighting for my country.<p>

_**Note: Russia is referred to as "Her" because of the title "Mother Russia." I'm pretty sure Russia doesn't have any lady lumps... Belarus would freak.**_

**This is a fanfiction of a fanfiction... (FANCEPTION! 8D) and I based it loosely off of "Fall of a Hero" by **whitetyger123. **The last chapter of it brought tears to my eyes. Anyway, this fanfic will basically be in the POV of a regular human who is suffering from the effects of the United States being bombed and the after effects of that. I'd advise you to read "Fall of a Hero" by whitetyger123 first… I'm basing the events of the post apocalyptic wasteland that was America on how he's being physically tortured. **

**Disclaimer! Again, I'll say it – this is a fanfic of a fanfic! The only thing I own is the characters I use… the original place where I got this idea from is from whitetyger123's fanfiction. Now, read it or face the wrath of Tony the alien. **


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